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A while ago you had the chance to ask founder of the GNU Project, and free software advocate, Richard Stallman, about GNU/Linux, free software, and anything else. You can read his answers to a wide range of questions below. As usual, RMS didn't pull any punches.

Capitalism and You
by eldavojohn

Your monkish lifestyle would leave most people who work in software
screaming for a Lear Jet and you have stated "I've always lived cheaply ...
like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is
not telling me what to do." Growing up in the United States, I have been
served the koolaid of Capitalism several times and I have been taught that
the inherent competition and struggle for money in all aspects of our lives
make us the greatest country ever. I've read a lot of your comments on
intellectual property reform and I can't help but feel that it just isn't
compatible with capitalism. Have you ever had problems rectifying your
stance on intellectual property with capitalism? Do you see any problems at
all with no copyright or patent laws inside a capitalistic society?

RMS: First, I need to correct an apparent misunderstanding. I do not have
a "stance on intellectual property", because that would mean using the
term "intellectual property" in my thinking. I take pains never to do
that, because that term is an obstacle to clear thinking. Every time
it is used, it misrepresents the legal reality and spreads confusion.

I judge copyright law by its practical requirements and their
practical effects. I judge patent law by its practical requirements
and their practical effects -- totally different requirements and
totally different effects. These two laws are different on every
practical point; all they have in common is a very abstract idea
which is of no practical significance.

I must not respond directly to a question that treats copyright law
and patent law as a single issue. If I did, I'd be lumping them
together and spreading the confusion I want to clear up.

However, I can split it into two separate questions.

First, copyright. Copyright is a legal restriction on certain kinds
of use of works of authorship. The US has always had some sort of
copyright law, but it has changed tremendously. The US has always
practiced capitalism, but many sorts of works were, at some time in US
history, not covered by copyright. Thus, we know it is possible to
have capitalism without copyright.

However, I don't advocate simple elimination of copyright as a
solution.

Works that are designed for use doing practical jobs must be free;
however, simply eliminating copyright on those works would not have
this result. In software, it would make things worse, because
copyleft is based on copyright. Without copyright, programs could
still be made nonfree using EULAs, tivoization, and nonrelease of
source code, but we would no longer be able to prevent this using
copyleft.

If we wanted to legislate to make all these works-for-use free, we
would have to go further than just eliminating copyright on them. In
an ideal world, we would do this, but I don't propose doing it now.

As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I
advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason
to abolish it.

Patent law is a totally different issue. A patent is an artificial
monopoly on using a specified idea. There have been successful
capitalist countries that didn't have a patent system. My expertise
is in computing, so I campaign to eliminate patents from computing,
where I know they are harmful. However, Boldrin and Levine present
good arguments that patents do mostly harm in every field and that it
would be better to eliminate patents entirely.

With any or all of these changes, we would still have capitalism;
only some details would be different.

I feel like you have this admirable and altruistic quality where money
isn't the ultimate driving force and when you speak to people who base
their entire lives around money, there's a fundamental disconnect that is
overlooked.

RMS: Arguments are always based on values. The free software movement is
based on values of freedom and community -- that is where it differs
from open source. People who don't share those values will simply not
get it, no matter what I might say. Since that's inevitable, I don't
worry about it. I do my best, and I persuade some, which is better
than giving up and persuading none.

Re:Do you like being worshiped ?
by capt.Hij

This brings up a good point. Let me rephrase the question.
Mr Stallman, you are regarded as a founding father of the free software
movement, and your opinion on free software carries a lot of weight.
Because of this you are put under a harsh spot light, and every little
thing you do is magnified. For example, your comments about Steve Jobs
immediately after his death were broadcast quite widely. To some people the
timing showed a lack of taste and were seen as disrespectful.

RMS: Those people evidently were more concerned with forms of politeness
that with substantive good and evil. Someone told me I should not
criticize Jobs because he could not defend himself -- while thousands
were lionizing him with the indirect support of Apple's PR machine.
Compared to that, I was David against Goliath.

Because of your status in the free software movement your statement was used by some
to smear the larger community. How do you feel about this kind of
attention?

RMS: I stand by what I said about Jobs. Apple is your enemy, and if you
don't recognize this and fight, you're being a chump.

If someone tried to spin my statement as something to be ashamed of,
please fight back by arguing with his spin.

Have you given it much thought, and what kind of insight can you
share about the situation you are in when your private and public
mannerisms are misconstrued to be part of a larger group's views and
outlooks?

RMS: I hope that a lot of the community shares my views of Jobs and Apple.
I ask them to stand up and be counted.

Apple's favorable public image, including public admiration of Jobs
for side issues, is a crucial asset in its war against our freedom.
To tarnish its image, we need to speak loud and clear about Apple's
wrongs. When Steve Jobs is praised for the elegant styling of the
jails he designed, we must respond that it is wrong to put users in
jail. Speak up and spread the word!

Role of the FSF
by ssam

It seems to me that in the early days of the FSF the main role was writing
software. A huge chunk of that code is what makes up modern day free
operating systems. A lot of it is class leading software (bash, gcc, emacs,
etc). In the past few years it seems that the FSF is far more involved in
campaigning than coding. Is this an accurate view of the situation? Is this
intentional, and if so why? Should the FSF be trying to create a class
leading web browser, for example.

RMS: In the first years of developing the GNU system, before Linux
completed the system, not many people worked on free software. A few
staff hired by the FSF made a big difference to our progress.

Once GNU/Linux caught on, lots more people got involved, so that the
few people the FSF could hire were inevitably a tiny fraction of what
the community did. Meanwhile, our other jobs became bigger and more
important. For instance, once the DMCA made it illegal to release
free software to handle common media formats, just writing free
software was no longer enough, so we launched the
DefectiveByDesign.org campaign. A year ago we launched our campaign
against Restricted Boot, which is the way Microsoft perverts Secure
Boot into an anti-security feature.

"Success" is not our goal; we're not here to win a race, we are here
to win freedom. I didn't write GCC with the idea of making a "better"
C compiler. I wrote it so there would be a freedom-respecting C
compiler, and while I was at it, I did the best job I knew how. We
didn't develop GNU to have a "better" operating system than Unix; we
developed it so we could have a freedom-respecting operating system.
It's the same today.

Thus, if we could raise money to hire a few software developers, we
would spend it on projects that are more than technical improvements.
For instance, it would make no sense to try to develop a web browser
that is "better" in a merely practical sense. There is no reason to
think we could outdo the Firefox developers in what they are good at,
and it would be wasteful duplication to try.

Instead we are trying to do something that Firefox does not aim to do:
protect the user's privacy from surveillance by web sites, and protect
the user's freedom from nonfree Javascript code. A volunteer is
working on our variant of Firefox, called IceCat, with changes for
these purposes. We don't have funds for this, so would you like
volunteer to help?

GNU visibility and factioning
by Digana

GNU is supposed to be a free operating system as well as a group of people
working towards building this OS. To a casual observer, however, GNU does
not appear very active.

RMS: I've decided to post new package releases in a more visible place in
gnu.org.

Development of GNU is done by volunteers, so the level of activity is
up to you. If you wish GNU were more active, join in the work on some
GNU package that interests you. For instance, it would be useful to
have more developers for LibreJS, which detects and blocks nonfree
Javascript, and for IceCat.

Some of the most prominent and supposedly GNU
packages, such as Gimp, Gnome, GTK+, and R are mostly GNU in name only. The
hackers working on these projects have very little interaction with other
hackers working on GNU projects and they very frequently espouse views
contrary to GNU's philosophical aims. Thus to an outside observer, GNU does
not appear to be a cohesive group of people working towards a common goal.

RMS: The GNU project is not as cohesive as I wish it were. To some extent,
this is a consequence of an approach that was necessary. The only way
to develop something as large as the GNU system through the work
mostly of volunteers was to divide it into projects that could be
implemented mostly independently by different people. The design of
Unix lent itself to this. The fact that the GNU system incorporated
programs such as X and TeX, that were developed by other people or
groups that regarded the GNU Project as just a user, pushed in the
same direction.

There is always a centrifugal tendency when many groups work mostly
independently. It is often hard to persuade the developers of one
component to do what improves the system as a whole rather than what
will make their own component more useful and successful.

By 1990, when we started the HURD kernel, I expected that in a couple
of years it would be working and we would integrate the GNU system.
However, the HURD didn't work at all until 1996, and in the mean time
the community began using GNU with Linux as the kernel. By the time
we started using it that way, others had integrated the GNU/Linux
combination, making various GNU/Linux distros.

The initial goal of GNU, to have a free operating system, has been
achieved; the initial sharp focus on completing a free Unix-like
system is no longer applicable. This doesn't mean our work is over;
most GNU/Linux distros today contain nonfree software, and there are more things that we expect a system to
do. We still need people to seek out and do the development jobs that
need doing in order to win freedom for the users of computing.

My first step to make the GNU Project more cohesive was in 1999. In
the 1980s and 90s, when I appointed someone as the maintainer for a
GNU package, I took for granted that he would understand that his job
was to manage a part of a larger project, and what that implied. In
1999 I realized this could not be taken for granted, so I began
explaining this relationship to new maintainers and asking new
maintainers to agree to it. However, the relationship with a few
packages had already become distant.

Many GNU mailing lists being private further the public perception that GNU
is not even actively producing software anymore.

RMS: Our main packages have public discussion lists, but that's a choice
for the package maintainer to make. Feel free to suggest changes to
the maintainer.

What can be done to remedy this situation? How can we strengthen GNU, make
it reach out again to the people it's supposed to be freeing?

RMS: For the most part, this is up to you. When you start working on a new
free program, do you propose making it a GNU package? Would you like
it to be part of a coherent GNU Project? If so, please write to me.

How to reverse the aggregation problem?
by concealment

A problem with software and operating systems is what I call the
"aggregation problem," which is that what we have now is an aggregate of
past solutions to problems that may no longer exist. The stuff piles up,
increasing complexity and decreasing the uniformity and effectiveness of
the interface. At what point do software projects call for a top-down
redesign? How can free software do this where industry cannot?

RMS: I don't have any solution to offer for this particular problem, other
than the slow methods we are using now. Partly that's because I don't
think this is the most important issue -- I think our freedom is more
important than technical improvement.

However, this is not the only area in which more uniformity is
desirable. Around 1990, I designed a protocol for configuring and
building packages from source: you type `./configure; make install'.
It would be nice if all free software packages supported this uniform
interface, but they don't.

To help implement that uniformity, a GNU volunteer recently made it
very easy to use Autoconf in Python packages, so that they can build
and install using our uniform commands. If you maintain a program in
Python, how about adding this support? Every user that isn't a Python
programmer will be glad he can install your program without learning a
special Python build method.

What project is using the wrong license?
by gQuigs

What free software project is using a license that doesn't actually match
with it's mission - or hinders free software in other ways? In other words,
if you could *magically* switch the license of one project - which would
you choose and why? Examples: Move Mesa to GPLv3, Move Linux from GPLv2 to
v3, Make android GPLv3, GCC - from GPLv3 to Apache.

RMS: If I could magically change one program to GPLv3, it would be Linux.
One of the improvements of GPLv3 is that it blocks tivoization, and
Linux is very frequently tivoized. (Many Android devices contain a
tivoized copy of Linux.)

While we're talking about magic, I'd change the license of LLVM also.

Another program that is important to convert is LibreCAD. This is
more than a fantasy: the developers of LibreCAD are working on
replacing the old GPLv2-only code that they included, so as to switch
to GPLv3-or-later. Would you like to help?

What do you think of non-free, non-software works?
by Shlomi Fish

Dear Dr. Stallman,
In this Slashdot feature"Stallman is quoted here saying
that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics,
music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e.,
"Non-Free.")." However, this feature does not give a citation from you for
that. To add to the confusion in a post to the Creative Commons Community
mailing list, Rob Myers said:

"RMS's views on culture are
coherent and consistent with his views on software. But he's treating game
assets as a matter of functionality (software) rather than speech
(culture). There is an issue with the latter not being free.."

So I'm a little confused. Do you approve of people using non-free licenses
for cultural works, including the CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa, CC-by-nd, and
CC-by-nc-nd licenses? If so, when?

This is especially important given the
fact that in the process for formulating the latest version of the Creative
Commons licenses (4.0), there has been some requests to deprecate the
non-commercial (nc) and/or no-derivatives (nd) options (which I doubt will
happen, but is nonetheless some thing some people feel strongly about).

RMS: After some 12 years of stating my position in all my speeches on
Copyright vs Community, and publishing transcripts,
I'd expect interested people to have found it. But here it is.

Those works that are made for doing practical jobs must be free. This
includes software, educational works, reference works, text fonts,
recipes, and 3d-printer models for objects for practical use, as well
as some other things.

Works of testimony and opinion, and artistic works, don't have to be
free as in the four freedoms, but their users should have more freedom
than now. I think people should be free to share them (noncommercial
redistribution of exact copies), and to remix them. Putting DRM or
EULAs on them should be banned too. I think all the CC licenses do
these things, more or less, and I use CC-ND for my statements of my
views, including this one.

I call this a "peculiar problem" because I don't think these licenses
are bad in principle. The problem is purely a matter of practical
consequences, and it seems they should be avoidable, yet I can't see a
way to avoid them. I hope one is found; in the mean time, I urge not
using these two licenses.

Favorite hack
by vlm

Give me your best hack. Specifically something YOU did personally
not hire / grad student. Hardware, software only (yes yes the GPL is cool
but I'm looking for code or schematic or at least a description of
something made out of source or solder)
I can't put words in your mouth but the ideal answer would be something
like "I'm particularly proud of the O(n) memory garbage collection routine
in emacs implemented around '89 and how it worked was very roughly ..." or
"I really like my homemade fully automatic automotive relay based routing
system for my OH scale model railroad sorting yard" or "I built my own
legal limit ham radio amplifier" almost certainly a different topic of
course, but something of this form of answer.

RMS: I can't remember all the hacks that I was proud of, so I can't pick
the best. But here's something I remember fondly. The last piece of
Gosmacs code that I replaced was the serial terminal scrolling
optimizer, a few pages of Gosling's code which was proceeded by a
comment with a skull and crossbones, meaning that it was so hard to
understand that it was poison. I had to replace it, but worried that
the job would be hard. I found a simpler algorithm and got it to work
in a few hours, producing code that was shorter, faster, clearer, and
more extensible. Then I made it use the terminal commands to insert
or delete multiple lines as a single operation, which made screen
updating far more efficient.

Why FDR and Churchill?
by eldavojohn

During a Q&A Session a while back you were asked about people
and movements near and dear to your heart and you said "I admire Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the
things that they did." I love World War II history and I also find myself
in a love-hate situation with Churchill. Could you go into further detail
about what specifics lead you to single out these two over leaders like
Lincoln, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or even historical figures who have
enabled information itself like Turing, Shannon, etc?

RMS: I like math, and I respect good mathematicians, but I don't admire
them as heroes. The people I admire are those who fight for freedom.

Why did I mention Roosevelt and Churchill in particular? I didn't
make a list of all the leaders I admire and then choose the ones I
admire most. That would be a big job, and my memory does not lend
itself to that, so I didn't try. I mentioned the people that came to
mind.

I was thinking of leaders that fought against evil tyranny. Of the
five leaders you mentioned, Roosevelt and Churchill had the hardest
fight against the greatest evil. King George trampled the colonists'
rights, and the Confederacy fought for slavery, but Hitler's genocidal
empire was much worse.

If I were judging peacetime political leadership, I would not choose
Churchill; perhaps Jefferson.

Stolen bag / laptop in Argentina
by Cigarra

What ever happened with the stolen bag and laptop? Did you get something
back? Did you LOSE data (that is, was something not backed up)? Are you mad
with the organizers / country that hosted the event?

RMS: My friends never found any sign of what was stolen. I lost some
files, those which were outside the directories that I regularly
backed up, but nothing really important.

I don't blame the speech organizers or Argentina in general for this
theft. The reason I will never go to Argentina again has nothing to
do with the theft. I announced it before I arrived in Argentina: I
object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I
refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too
will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.

Revolution OS ...
by i.r.id10t

Interviews with you comprised a big percentage of the documentary
Revolution OS.
If it were to be remade today, and the financial aspects ignored, what do
you think would be different? If you were producing such a documentary
today, what would you focus on?

RMS: I didn't make that movie, so how to make it was not my decision, and
how to make one today would not be my decision. But I see some things
that would have to be different.

Much attention was paid to business leaders of the open source bubble,
which popped after the interviews. The movie ended saying how some
companies' stock had gone down. If the movie were made today, those
people and their commercial claims would probably not be in it. Also,
I would not be found at a "Linux" event; shortly after that time, I
concluded it was self-defeating to legitimize events that call the GNU
system "Linux".

Other advocates
by SirGarlon

Who, other than yourself and the FSF, do you consider to be effective
advocates for software freedom? Please name individuals if you can.

RMS, I am a PhD student in computing and I have run up against an
interesting problem. I consider FOSS to be at the core of my personal
philosophy.

RMS: I have to point out that there is no "FOSS" philosophy. The term
"FOSS" is a way of referring to two different philosophies: free
software is one, and open source is the other.

When you want to refer to both philosophies, I recommend "FLOSS"
rather than "FOSS". "FLOSS", or "Free/Libre and Open Source
Software", gives the two equal visibility, whereas with "FOSS", "Free
and Open Source Software", "Open Source" is more prominent. But you
can't possibly agree with both of these philosophies, because they
disagree at the deepest level. Your views might be one, or the other,
or a mixture, or something else, but it can't be both of them at once.

RMS: It sounds like your philosophy may be closer to the free software movement.
We consider this an ethical issue, whereas the usual open source philosophy
presents it as a practical issue alone.

Therefore, in my research, I use all FOSS software. Now, the problem arises
when trying to justify my use of FOSS to colleagues and supervisors.

RMS: Why do you need to try to justify your _own_ use of free software?
I'd expect you to decide, and follow your own decision, with no need
to justify it to anyone else. Is there something I have
misunderstood?

The time you need to argue is to convince other teachers and
researchers to move to free software.

I have tried to make the case that it is an ethical issue, and have argued the
merits of freedom and academia, however, I invariably am told "that's not
an academic argument".

RMS: I suggest you respond "I'm a citizen first, and an academic second,
so I care about ethical arguments as well as academic arguments."

This is incredibly frustrating and annoying to me
as, in academic research, we are constantly being restricted by "research
ethics" (e.g. the ethical treatment of subjects, plagiarism, etc.) and I am
more than willing to bet that if a researcher objected to a methodology
based on "religious principles" they would be excused.

RMS: I don't understand -- "excused" from what? I am not sure now what
issue the argument is about. Are they criticizing you for your
decision? If so, you don't need to be "excused", you just need to
stand firm and proud. Or are you asking them for permission? There,
too, standing firm is best, but it is trickier.

Or are you asking them to change their practices? That is good to
try, but there is no guaranteed recipe for persuading others. I
suggest telling them about the malicious features commonly found in
nonfree software, to bring home to them that this is an important
issue. Also, raise the issue publicly so as to build consciousness of
the issue and search for allies.

It is ironic because it is people like RMS and people like you who praise him for his views, that are a part of Apple's succes.

The problem is that those jails serves a function. When you enforce very strict rules how somethings behave or look that it is decreases the learnability factor and that users will perceive it as easier to use. Even the "elegance" (look at the aesthetic usability effects) has a role.

You can argue that those "jails" aren't needed but unfortunately a lot of developers (and FOSS

The "my mother doesn't care about X, she just wants Y" argument is so tired and frankly worthless.

There was a time when the typical mother didn't care about freedom of religion, or freedom of speech, or any of dozens of other things that are rather important.Just because your mother doesn't care about freedom of computing doesn't mean it isn't just as important.

You are one of those blind people that can't see how much depends on computers nowadays and how much giving the control of our computers to another party affects us now and will affect us even more in the future. Fighting for user freedom is every bit as important as fighting for freedom of speech, democracy, human rights and any other worthy fight out there.

I'm not convinced that it is because iOS developers are so much more talented.

I don't think it is a question of more talented it is a question of who are the iOS developers. Apple customers have consistently shown1) A willingness to pay more for software2) A willingness to buy applications that are mainly interface upgrades of open source solutions3) A hostility towards software with a bad UI

The result is people who design for iOS spend time on graphic design. So in terms of interface, yes they are

This is exactly what I was thinking. Also, I don't really think it's the job of programmers to make an elegant UI. The job of a programmer is to make functional software, perhaps with an elegant API that the designers and UI/UX engineers can latch on to while creating an elegant UI. Free software tends to lack those elegant UIs because the free software movement tends to attract more programmers than it does designers.

You can argue that those "jails" aren't needed but unfortunately a lot of developers (and FOSS developers are even worse) couldn't design a good usable interface when somebody doesn't hold hands. Give them too much freedom and you will get things like The Gimp.

Here's the very obvious counterargument: If somebody puts a really bad UI out there, nobody will use that program, and the bad UI will die. If they put a kind of bad UI out there, some people will use it, some won't, but either way it's their choice.

Using your example of the GIMP: Those who like the current GIMP interface can use it, and those that don't will continue to use Photoshop or whatever other image editor they'd like. And because it's Free Software, anyone who is sufficiently motivated and/or fund

That solves the "good enough" problem. You don't need to jail your platform to satisfy the "good enough" user. For those that don't care, the default reigns supreme. For those that do care, they can tweak it any way their heart desires. And everybody gets what they want.

It's all this stuff that made me a "recovering ex-geek." With all the evil in this world, this is what geeks get up in arms about? I should be insulted and politically attacked because I use an iPad for basic Internet functions? Seriously? This is what gets people riled enough to insult strangers?

I use GIMP, Blender, Inkscape and POVRay on my Mac. Does that make me less of an apostate? Is my soul saved? Oh, wait, am I in the Sunni or Shia part of the open source world? Get out your best bathysphere, because this shit does not have a bottom.

Yes, fine, debate IP law and copyright and all that. Lots of meat and important issues there that I agree matters. But stop with the attacks on people who have different use cases or sometimes want something slick and trouble free for a specific purpose. Anyone who thinks less of me because I buy a gadget they don't like is kindly invited to blow the nearest chimp.

The reality is there are few things to get riled up about to begin with. An understanding of the situation of the people on the other side and consideration of their needs and viewpoints usually defuses these issues to some extent. Where the conflict truly does become one where you can't compromise on, you simply have to fight the war and win it, but you do it within the lines. There are people in real wars who don't always kill each other for the sake of killing one another, they kill to take objectives

You missed the part where I said that was fine. It's the "you chose a different type of computing device therefore you are morally bankrupt $TRENDY_INSULT_OF_THE_WEEK" part of the message that need to be stuffed into a box and shot into the Sun. It's tiresome, same as it's tiresome in politics or any other sphere.

Hypothetical situation: I sell you a device. It is now your property (unless you, like Apple and Microsoft, believe that the vendor is still the proprietor after the sale, which is even worse...) You pay me money for it.

At some point, I decide that I don't like what you're doing with the item I sold you and decide to turn it into a brick using a backdoor that only I know about. That is theft of your property.

Suppose I decide to take away features that were a large factor in your decision to make the purchas

The problem is that those jails serves a function. When you enforce very strict rules how somethings behave or look that it is decreases the learnability factor and that users will perceive it as easier to use. Even the "elegance" (look at the aesthetic usability effects) has a role.

No, the jails do not serve a function. Standards serve a function. The entire x86 revolution was based upon standards, not jails. It was based upon anyone being able to replicate the standards.

Has Stallman ever said, "A unified design is bad"? Has he ever said that elegant user interfaces are undesirable? Has he ever lead a protest against beautiful hardware? Has he ever even claimed to be an expert on user interface design?

The elegant design and easy user interface is incredibly handy, and valuable. The jail is the part that does not need to come along with it, and is immoral and hurts consumers and competition. Stallman and t

And this function is to keep users helpless, powerless, deprived of rights, separated from each other, and under constant surveillance.

When you enforce very strict rules how somethings behave or look that it is decreases the learnability factor and that users will perceive it as easier to use. Even the "elegance" (look at the aesthetic usability effects) has a role.

It is only the elegance that makes it easier to use. You totally failed to demonstrate how the missing freedoms (to run, to study, to modify, and to share modifications) are making it easier to use. A simple mind experiment will show how much you are confused. Imagine that the entire Android-related stack was exactly, almost literally the same, but free: the core OS, the har

Jobs was an egomaniac ass who made more harm to the industry than anyone else and contributed to basically nothing. Hopefully when Apple finally sinks, as it certainly will, we won't even remember of him anymore.

Indeed. This is what the asshole Jobs was quoted to have declared: "'I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want.'

Unlike RMS, Jobs was too egoistic and wrongly thought that ideas could be patented, and that it was wrong or illegal for any one else to copy or use ideas which were used in iPhones. Jobs was wrong. Under him, Apple had applied for over thousands of patents related to smartphones, and hundreds of patents on multi-touch alone. This was part of Apple's attempts to completely shut down any competition. Apple chose to assert just 3 patents against Samsung; which it felt were iconic and stood a good chance of getting injunctions awarded.

In reality, ALL THE CLAIMS asserted in 2 of the re-examined 3 patents have been invalidated by the USPTO. So Jobs was not only wrong to think that ideas could be patented (only implementations of ideas can be patented); he was wrong in his assessment of the most valuable patents; and his attitude to freedom, capitalism and competition can best be described as childish.

So this is the content you wished for. Now debate rationally unlike Jobs, and give us your response.

Unlike RMS, Jobs was too egoistic and wrongly thought that ideas could be patented, and that it was wrong or illegal for any one else to copy or use ideas which were used in iPhones. Jobs was wrong.

There are three separate concepts here: That copying of Apple's ideas is something1) Jobs didn't want.2) Is wrong (immoral).3) Is illegal.

Now it follows from your quote that (1) is true. But you assert he was wrong on (2) and (3). And (2) is in any case only your opinion.

Now it's certainly true that Jobs set the lawyers on Android (Google, Samsung etc) with regard to patents. That doesn't mean that Jobs opinion was that patents protect ideas. Simply that that was the available legal means to fight those co

Apple did nothing, they just got a lot of prior art ideas and managed to patent them exactly because the patent office is a mess. One by one those patents are falling, but there is still much mess and patent trolling ahead.

Furthermore, software patents are something that shouldn't even exist.

Depends how you define "enhance", but your question brings one of the main problems about software patents and even patents as a whole. It is impossible to objectively define what is a valid patent and what is not.

You might have a point, had iOS the iPhone not directly adopted a number of features that Android already had. Notifications are the most famous, but I also recall early iPhone users telling me how the flash on my Droid was useless (until Apple added one to the iPhone) and how OTA updates weren't necessary (until Apple added that, too) and how sharing pics with 3rd party apps was dumb (obviously, that became one of the core iPhone uses).

All tech steals from all other tech -- Stallman knows that to be true,

I suppose you could make the argument that Stallman is an egomaniac ass, but how could you possibly argue that he's harmed the industry and contributed nothing? He's not imposing the GPL on anyone; it's yours to take if you so choose. He's helped develop a very useful and widely accepted development tool chain, which once again, is there if you want it, but there are alternatives if you don't.

RMS never forced anything into anyone and never will, it would go against everything he defends. Jobs on the other hand did nothing but to copy other people's ideas, having the nerve to patent them, and marketed them well. After failing several times in similar attempts.

It is people like you that are the problem, my good anonymous sir. People who want so eagerly to be slaves that they resent anybody else who does not. You are the sour grape, the willing subservient slave that traded freedom for a bit of

I get the Apple is evil thing. I do. Please though, tell me what company I can trust? Should I trust Google with one of their phones for example? I think that ship sailed. I was thinking maybe one of the new Ubuntu phones, but wait, Canonical is in the middle of user privacy issues.

Did RMS ever say "Don't use Android"? Rather, the FSF has specific caveats such as:

1. "tivoisation" that RMS mentions above. Buying a phone with a locked bootloader restricts your ability to load your own kernel. Not providing a developer mode to load custom firmware or run utilities than require root also restricts freedom.2. There's the f-droid repository for free software apps.3. They have a campaign to write a driver for PowerVR GPUs (see also freedreno, lima)4. Replicant is their Android distro, with t

I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.

But it does demand fingerprints of most visitors. Someone needs to file a Freedom of Information request to find out how many crimes or attacks this policy has prevented per dollar of implementation cost. Then compare that to the US deficit and use some common sense.

I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.

Such as the United States?

Yes, they took mine last time I visited the US. I think if you were to visit here (UK) your fingerprints would be validated against those in the biometric passport (or visa), unless you live here.

I'm not sure about Argentina, but I suspect their reason for requiring fingerprints from American visitors is the same as in Brazil: reciprocity. Brazil only requires fingerprints (and Entry Visas) from citizens of those countries which require the same from Brazilian citizens. I know for sure that Argentina doesn't require fingerprints or visas from Brazilian visitors.

"I want to encourage clear thinking about copyright law. Separately, I want to encourage clear thinking about patent law."
I have also seen (in these days of international trade pacts) counterfeiting lumped in with copyright infringement and patent violations. I am unsure of how the law looks upon this, but to me it seems different enough. If one illegally downloads a song or a movie and violates copyright, they know it is not an official copy, and are getting an exact copy of the original. I think of coun

No it does not, but then again we don't need them to exist at all. There are times you must compromise, but there are times you must stand for what you believe. You don't need to compromise with big corporations. They are a cancer and should be purged.

Right, so If RMS were to ask nicely then the evil companies would change their ways and totally destroy their money-making model?? How naive are you? At the very least his labelling will bring attention and then the people can make an informed decision.

Theres a huge difference between taking away market choices (ie, by not offering them) and stripping someone of personal liberty; a difference that he apparently does not get.

RMS comes across as an intelligent dude, and I respect that he is consistent, but he seriously lacks perspective and I think his priorities / values are all out of whack. I feel like if he had to compromise with MS for example to keep GNU alive and kicking, he would rather go down with the ship; its noble but its not terribly practica

You seem to want to colour the world entirely in economic terms. You can try and make everything look like a market if you like, but if you do, then the term loses its meaning because if everything is a market then the word provides no information.

user freedom= their ability to use programs they did not create in a way that preserves their freedom.

User freedom is more than that. It's also freedom to use their own devces as they see fit. It' their freedom to create programs if they wish. And, it's their free

You call that a stretch goal? You're thinking inside of the box, pal. You need a paradigm change to lift your horizons. Dig deep to find out what you're really made of. Be a man, you can do better than that. Elevate your view. Pay it forward.

Good and Evil?! To me, evil is some despot murdering people or starving them; not some business guy getting market share.

Perspective people!

You need to gain some perspective. In the real world, most evil is not done by supervillians. It is done by ordinary people serving their self interests.

Look at the 2008 financial crisis for instance. A large number of bankers made a large number of unethical decisions to benefit themselves, any of these decisions would have had little negative effect in themselves b

He probably didn't realize that Argentina and a couple of other countries apply the principle of equal treatment. They take fingerprints of US citizens (sometimes ONLY US citizens) because the US takes fingerprints of their citizens. What comes around, goes around. RMS, whom I respect a lot and whom I met personally once, should campaign against his own country not only taking fingerprints, but also shoving all those newfangled biometric passports down the throats of the whole world's population.

For the last 20 years I've been an advocate of free software, but I've also merrily made an exception for gaming systems -- buying a series of consoles and handhelds which are as closed as platforms can be. I wasn't *quite* able to explain why this was OK.

RMS helps:

As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.

I don't understand - So if I create great software to manage an HVAC system to great efficiency I have to give it away, but if I make Angry Birds I don't? What's the difference?

Not quite. You can sell whatever you like, but we don't have to buy it.

Given the choice of your highly efficient non-free HVAC software, and somewhat less efficient free-as-in-speech HVAC software, many of us would prefer to use the free-as-in-speech one. At least we can understand and improve that one.

Whereas, I have no qualms about buying a non-free Angry Birds; I have no intention of every improving it, nor do I anticipate some other hacker doing so.

I don't understand - So if I create great software to manage an HVAC system to great efficiency I have to give it away, but if I make Angry Birds I don't? What's the difference?

Having purchased the HVAC system I might want to make changes to it, by changing the software. It's an important thing. (RMS started all this stuff when he couldn't get the source code to a printer driver).

I've also merrily made an exception for gaming systems -- buying a series of consoles and handhelds which are as closed as platforms can be. I wasn't *quite* able to explain why this was OK.

RMS helps:

It is ok because RMS is wrong. I will probably be voted down for this, but here it goes:

In any voluntary exchange, being buying food, cars, software or whatever, the only people that should be able to decide the terms of the exchange are the individuals doing the exchange. If I buy a software that has a "I must wear a chicken suit to use this" license, it is because I determine that the software is more valuable to me than the requirements the license has and the money I pay for it. Therefore, as lo

If he simply tries to convince people that it is best for them to use "free as in RMS" licenses, then I would have no issue with it, but he here is actually advocating changing copyright law to coerce people into using them.

I think this is exactly his position. Feel free to cite me something that says otherwise.

Why do you need to explain it? You presumably liked them and derived pleasure from them. That's all that matters. Someone sold a product you saw value in purchasing. It's not Stallman's fucking business.

By that logic, if I buy a product carved from the bones of endangered tigers, by slaves, that's fine -- as long as I like the product and derive pleasure from it. It's not the World Wildlife Fund's business, nor Anti-Slavery International's.

*Of course* non-free software isn't an affront on the scale of slavery or hunting endangered species. But nonetheless, it *is* a social problem if the mainstream computer systems most people use, don't give users the freedom to change them as they see fit.

Because vendor lock-in is a form of monopoly and interferes with free market economy. In general, it's not possible to hire the programmer of your choice to enhance the software you own, and RMS considers this unethical.

I don't *think* RMS advocates making it illegal to create non-free software (because that in itself would be an infringement of personal freedom).

What he wants is to educate people into recognising what they're choosing when they choose non-free software. Most people sleepwalk into using non-free software. They live with the constraints because they're not aware that the constrains can be taken away. They think of software as something you accept as-is, rather than something malleable that can be adapted to

Because the market is not that good in doing so anymore for sometime now. Adam Smith theory does not work anymore save for very few scenarios. There are big corporations with too much power to influence the market and do as their will, regardless of the user's wishes.

Oh it happened in the past, but their power continuously increased since then. Today their power and influence is incomparably greater than it was even a few decades ago. Capitalism is very valid and quite a good economical system, but laissez-faire capitalism doesn't exist, never existed and belongs to the realm of fantasy together with non authoritarian comunism, anarchy and many other ideas that cannot ever work in our world because they ignore human nature.

"Works that are designed for use doing practical jobs must be free; "... uhmm... and that would be because...??

It's a Philosophical starting point, like arguing for Democracy over Monarchy. It'd be very, very, difficult to experimentally determine which system is really better under all circumstances, so we resort to thought experiments.

RMS assumes that Freedom is better than Slavery, even if you are offered many shiny baubles to sign over your freedom.

Yes, Richard, I bet you would. LLVM proves that much of what you say is a lie, and that the industry can co-operate perfectly well on important tools without coercion via copyleft or any psuedo-religious nonsense about "good" and "evil". Getting that under GPL would be a huge win for the walled garden you are attempting to construct yourself. I can't imagine anything worse for the progress of LLVM, though, than to eliminate most of its

RMS saw lots of open source projects that started with MIT style licenses end up closed. LLVM doesn't prove anything. As BSD style licenses are coming back into fashion we'll see where we stand in ten years. I suspect watching BSD style project close will change people's mind about copyleft, the same thing that was true by the mid 1980s.

The best example is X-Windowing system. That started out as an MIT project and then the various Unixes created their own closed source proprietary versions. The effect was the open source version was worthless the worthwhile versions were closed source. When there was a desire to create something even usable, XFree86 it took many years to reconstruct.

In the end X is back to being open source but it was about a decade of serious effort to restore it. And still a lot of features from IRIX, Sun, NeXT... aren't in X11.org.

Yes, Richard, I bet you would. LLVM proves that much of what you say is a lie, and that the industry can co-operate perfectly well on important tools without coercion via copyleft or any psuedo-religious nonsense about "good" and "evil". Getting that under GPL would be a huge win for the walled garden you are attempting to construct yourself. I can't imagine anything worse for the progress of LLVM, though, than to eliminate most of its contributors by arbitrarily changing its licence to something that's not useful for them.

I was thinking something similar. He insists on calling the Linux operating system GNU/Linux (as if MIT's X-Windows, BSD, or anyone else contributed nothing), but says he'd change the license if he could-- but he can't. That he wants to prevent tivoization, something Linus is on-record as supporting.

Half the reason LLVM has advanced so quickly is that it's not GPL. Similar to all the Apache projects.

Regarding tsquar3d's question on FLOSS in research; I too have come across this in other fields of academia.

There are a lot of pro's to using FLOSS for research besides the ethical, and if you do need to justify your use of it then it is likely these you will need to rely on. So, off the top of my head, and with a more general not necessarily CS view:

Verifiability: you can trace the source code and know precisely what is being done in your analysis.

Reproducibility: you can distribute the exact version of the software you used for your analysis, to allow others to reproduce your results.

Longevity: proprietary products will stop being supported eventually and as such make it much harder to reproduce results at a later date.

Extensibility: it's quicker to make your awesome new twist on an existing analysis if you can just extend the existing software

Naturally this doesn't apply to all fields, or situations but these are all things I have come across while doing various things with applied machine learning.

On the other hand you will need to consider these points from the other side too. If you switch from the standard proprietary software your department uses then you have to prove that your new software provides the same results, or account for any discrepancies.

Similarly, if any extensions to the proprietary software have been made you may have to reproduce them yourself (and verify them, and so on).

In the end you have to weigh up the pro's and con's and see if the pro's of using FLOSS out weigh the con's, and in your case as a PhD student, also consider whether you actually have enough time to make the switch. (Unless you already have).

Verifiability: you can trace the source code and know precisely what is being done in your analysis.

That one is only mostly true: You can trace the source code, which is great most of the time, but if you have a "creative" compiler, it might do something different than what you'd expect, and if you run on "creative" hardware, it might do something different than what the source code and compiler expect. This is the old Reflections on Trusting Trust [bell-labs.com] argument.

If he spent as much time writing code as he spends soapboxing about the semantics of phrases like "Intellectual Property" and "FOSS", the GNU OS would be done and he wouldn't have to piggyback the GNU name on Linux.

I like free software as much as the next guy, but Richard's personal software peccadilloes don't constitute a new ethics -- only society as a whole can define what is or isn't ethical.

Actually I think he puts it in terms of ethics as a shortcut to having to defend the legal and financial ramifications of what he is suggesting. He's basically saying you should give away your software because it's the "right thing to do". If someone claims that his stance isn't friendly to competitive markets he claims they are calling him a communist and that he's the victim of a personal attack.

This guy is full of rhetoric and I'm not sure why he would still be considered a leader in this movement.

First, well when you invent a new kind of license that thousands of people use in their projects that gives him some validity based on experience. What new paradigm of license have you invented and given away? And how does it help guarantee freedom?

Second, he has been correct about warning how companies can misuse licenses.

> This guy is full of rhetoric and I'm not sure why he would still be considered a leader in this movement.And your personal ideology is any better? Because you haven't posted anything why we should follow yours...

Lastly, are you familiar with this George Bernard Shaw's quote?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

I may not agree with RMS on everything but I admire and respect his dedication to an ideology.

What's up with all these EldavoJohn questions that get approved for every "ask Slashdot"?!
It's not like they are the most interesting questions...

Nope. It's just one of my favorite aspects of Slashdot. They only ever take one or two of my questions no matter how many are +5 or +4 [slashdot.org]. The editors evidently have no time for editing let alone "friendship."

I'm sorry that you don't find my questions interesting but then again as an Anonymous Coward you're probably only interested in questions surrounding GNAA and Goatse.

Never mind during the month of crying over the death of S. Jobs, two other figures of much more critical importance died(Ritchie and McCarthy). The stories(footnotes really) of their death were completely drowned out by the S. Jobs eulogizing by the media. The whole mess was embarrassing. Stallman's response was well deserved. Death does not get you "off the hook" and deservedly so.

I'm enjoying reading the Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com], linked from Stallman's reference. I'm no expert in this field, but the arguments seem reasonable. Do you have any specific objections beyond name-calling?

That's not what Tivoization is. Tivoization is when you put copyleft software on a piece of hardware, but then lock down the hardware so that the users can modify the software in practise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization [wikipedia.org]